It looks like a lot happened this week while I was busy. It’s a little weird which things are getting attention and which aren’t.
For example, Ireland just repealed it’s almost total ban on abortion yesterday. Where the Irish will eventually draw the line has yet to be determined. But there was no ambiguity about the results. The vote was 68% to 32% in favor of repeal. How did this happen in an overwhelmingly conservative Catholic country (or it used to be)? Sentiment might have turned when Savita Halappanavar, a Hindu dentist living in Ireland, died from septicemia when she was having a miscarriage and the Irish hospital she was in refused to perform the abortion while there was still a fetal heartbeat. Actually, there were so many human stories about women having to leave the country to get abortions for various reasons. The Irish apparently decided that the grown up living humans should have a vote in this and they did. Overwhelmingly.
But from what I could tell yesterday, this vote got little attention here.
What did get attention was how children who have been already born are being ripped away from their parents who are asylum seekers by the border patrol. Where are these kids going? Foster care. Somewhere. The government isn’t making that very clear. The parents have little to no contact with their kids. They just — disappear. Well, they scream and cry for their mothers as they are taken away. So, you know, abortion is horrible, immoral, bad, disgusting, sacrilegious in the US but removing already born children from their mothers when these “animals” cross the border, that’s perfectly fine.
You know what these asylum seekers and illegal immigrants need? PETA.
Someone reminded me recently of those Myers Briggs categories the other day. I thought they were more geared towards business. (ENTP, if anyone is curious). But maybe we should pay more attention to them because I think the unintentional consequence of the right wing propagandists is that we are separating the country along the thinking perceivers and feeling judgers line. This is reinforced by the tidbit that the Big Five personality assessment that Cambridge Analytica used as a starting point for targeting certain political messaging also divides people by their openness to experience, empathy and analytical thinking abilities. (Yep, confirmed bleeding heart liberal who over analyzes stuff. Check.)
I’m going to guess that if you’re on the FJ side of the Myers Briggs assessment, you’re probably ok with no abortions and punishing families who cross our borders seeking asylum. It’s a reflexive reaction. Those people were not following the rules. I get thats the judging part of the personality. It’s probably important if you are religious or a conventional, conformity minded person. But people who respond with gut reactions rather than rational thought puzzle me greatly. How is their emotional reasoning able to sidestep the anguish of parents losing their children to strangers? Or do they get more positive response to the idea of power than the reality of what that power is doing to other human beings?
Oh, I’m sorry. Animals. That’s right, they’re animals to our president and his voters. So much easier to do what you want to people when you stop thinking of them as people.
In other news, Donald Trump says the actions of the FBI are “political” and he’s probably right there. The FBI bent over backwards to keep the investigation of his campaign a secret from the country in the lead up to the election of 2016. But that’s all irrelevant now. The question going forward is will Trump begin to demonize as political enemies those of us who resist him? I think we can answer that question. Donald Trump will burn to the ground anything and anyone that attempts to hold him accountable for his actions, regardless of costs.
Where are the feeling judgers when it comes to enforcing the rules with this president? Interesting. They must be getting something out of letting him escape the rule of law. Do they hate the rest of us even more than they love their rule of law?
Meanwhile, there’s this new bit of newsy goodness from Spain:
I can’t imagine what we have done to the Spanish but they seem pretty eager to spill the frijoles. Did Don Jr. act like a bore in Barcelona at some point? Who knows. But they’ve got the tape of the axis of evil between the Trump Crime Family, the Russians and the NRA. It’s only a matter of time before those pesky kids from Parkland, Florida get drawn into this. Then everybody watch out because as David Hogg says, “The young people will win”.
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This is where we are headed. Jews, Polish, they were all untermensch to the Germans:
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The Confluence 